Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual posts and pages. They’re what people see in their browser bar when they’re reading your content, what shows up in search results, and what gets shared on social media.
Here’s what you need to know: WordPress gives you several permalink structure options, but they’re not all created equal. Some make your URLs clean and readable, while others create cryptic messes that confuse both readers and search engines. We’ve already set up a default structure for your Badass Network blog that works well for most people, but you can customize it if you need to.
Why does this matter? Because your permalink structure affects how people find your content, how search engines rank it, and whether anyone actually clicks your links. Good URLs are short, descriptive, and give readers a clue what they’re about to read.
What You’re Looking At
Before we get into changing things, let’s talk about what permalink structures actually look like.
Default WordPress Options
WordPress offers several built-in permalink structures:
Plain:
badassnetwork.com/yourblog/?p=123
Yeah, this is ugly. It tells you nothing about the content and looks like a database query. Nobody uses this anymore unless they’re stuck with legacy systems.
Day and name:
badassnetwork.com/yourblog/2025/11/11/your-post-title/
Includes the full date in the URL. Some news sites use this because it shows when content was published. The downside? Your URLs get long, and dated content looks stale even if it’s still relevant.
Month and name:
badassnetwork.com/yourblog/2025/11/your-post-title/
Similar to above but slightly shorter. Still adds date info that most blogs don’t need.
Numeric:
badassnetwork.com/yourblog/archives/123
Better than plain, but barely. Still doesn’t tell anyone what the post is about.
Post name:
badassnetwork.com/yourblog/your-post-title/
This is what we recommend and what’s already set up on your blog. Clean, descriptive, SEO-friendly. Your post title becomes the URL—simple as that.
Custom structure:
You can create your own using tags like %year%, %monthnum%, %postname%, and others. Most people don’t need this, but it’s there if you’ve got specific requirements.
What Badass Network Uses
We’ve set your blog to use the post name structure by default. When you publish a post titled “How to Brew Better Coffee,” your URL becomes:
badassnetwork.com/yourblog/how-to-brew-better-coffee/
WordPress automatically converts your title to a URL-friendly format—lowercase letters, hyphens instead of spaces, no special characters. You can edit this before publishing if you want something shorter or different.
For pages, it works the same way. A page titled “About Me” becomes /about-me/.
Why Post Name Structure Works
There’s a reason this has become the standard for most blogs and websites.
Readable for Humans
When someone sees badassnetwork.com/yourblog/beginner-yoga-poses/ in a search result or shared link, they know exactly what they’re getting. Compare that to /2025/11/11/post-123/ where they’ve got no clue.
Readable URLs get more clicks. People trust them more. They’re easier to remember and easier to share in conversation.
Better for SEO
Search engines look at URLs when determining what your content’s about. Including relevant keywords in your permalink helps with rankings—though yeah, your actual content matters way more.
A post about vegan recipes at /vegan-chocolate-cake/ sends clearer signals than /archives/456/. Google’s not stupid—it can figure out what your post is about regardless—but why not make it obvious?
Clean and Timeless
Dates in URLs can make content look outdated even when it’s not. A guide at /2020/05/wordpress-tutorial/ might still be perfectly valid in 2025, but people see that 2020 and assume it’s obsolete.
Post name structure keeps your URLs evergreen. Your content stays fresh-looking indefinitely, which is particularly useful for how-to guides, tutorials, and reference material.
Easy to Edit
You can customize your post’s permalink before or after publishing without changing the entire structure. Don’t like how WordPress converted your title? Edit the slug directly. Your structure stays consistent across your whole blog.
Checking Your Permalink Settings
You probably don’t need to change anything—we’ve already got you set up with post name structure—but here’s how to check or modify your settings if you want to.
Access Permalink Settings
Log into your WordPress dashboard at badassnetwork.com/yourblog/wp-admin
Navigate to Permalinks
Go to Settings > Permalinks in the left sidebar
Verify Structure
You’ll see the Permalink Settings page with radio buttons for different structure options. Post name should already be selected—that’s what we set up for you.
Change if Needed
If it’s not, or if you want something different, select your preferred option
Save Changes
Scroll down and click Save Changes
Changes take effect immediately across your entire blog. All new posts and pages will use whatever structure you’ve selected.
Customizing Individual Post URLs
Even with post name structure set up, you can customize the URL for each individual post or page. This is called editing the “slug.”
When You’re Creating a Post
While you’re writing your post, look at the right sidebar in the editor. You’ll see a section called Permalink (you might need to scroll down a bit).
Click on it to expand, and you’ll see your post’s URL preview. Below that is an editable field showing the slug—the last part of your URL.
WordPress generates this automatically from your post title, but you can change it to anything you want. Usually you’d shorten it or adjust it for better keywords.
Example:
- Post title: “10 Simple Tips for Growing Tomatoes in Small Spaces”
- Auto-generated slug:
10-simple-tips-for-growing-tomatoes-in-small-spaces - Better slug:
growing-tomatoes-small-spaces
Shorter, still descriptive, includes the important keywords. Type your preferred slug in that field, and WordPress updates the preview immediately.
After Publishing
You can edit slugs on published posts too, though be careful—changing a URL after people have shared it means old links break.
Open Published Post
Open your published post in the editor
Find Permalink Section
Find the Permalink section in the right sidebar
Edit the Slug
Edit the slug field
Update Post
Click Update to save
Slug Best Practices
Since you’re manually editing these, here’s what works well.
Keep Them Short
Your full post title doesn’t need to be in the URL. Strip it down to the essential keywords.
Too long:
how-i-finally-learned-to-make-perfect-sourdough-bread-at-home
Better:
sourdough-bread-guide
Both tell you what the post’s about, but the shorter version is easier to share, type, and remember.
Use Hyphens, Not Underscores
WordPress and search engines treat hyphens as word separators. Underscores get treated as connectors, which can mess with how your keywords are interpreted.
Correct:
vegan-chocolate-cake
Avoid:
vegan_chocolate_cake
Most people stick with hyphens. It’s the standard, and WordPress defaults to them anyway.
Include Your Primary Keyword
If your post is about travel tips for Japan, get “japan” or “travel-japan” in there. If it’s about beginner yoga, include “yoga” or “beginner-yoga.”
Don’t stuff it with keywords, though. best-yoga-for-beginners-yoga-poses-yoga-tips looks spammy and doesn’t help.
One or two relevant keywords in a natural-sounding slug works fine.
Lowercase Only
WordPress converts everything to lowercase automatically, but worth keeping in mind when you’re typing. Coffee-Tips becomes coffee-tips when you save.
Skip Stop Words When Possible
Words like “a,” “the,” “and,” “of” don’t add much to URLs. You can usually leave them out.
Includes stop words:
a-guide-to-the-best-coffee-shops
Cleaner:
best-coffee-shops-guide
Not a huge deal either way, but shorter’s generally better.
Make It Descriptive
Someone should be able to guess what your post is about just from the URL. If your slug’s too vague or clever, you’re not doing yourself any favors.
Vague:
my-story
Descriptive:
overcoming-burnout
Yeah, the first one might work for a personal blog where people know you, but the second one’s clearer for everyone else.
What About Pages?
Everything above applies to pages too—they use the same permalink structure you’ve set.
One difference: Pages can have parent-child relationships, which affects URLs.
If you create a page called “Services” and then a child page called “Consulting,” the URL structure looks like:
badassnetwork.com/yourblog/services/consulting/
The parent page slug comes first, then the child page. You can nest these several levels deep, though most people don’t go more than two or three levels.
You set page parents in the Page Attributes section while editing. Most blogs keep pages pretty flat—no deep hierarchies—so this doesn’t come up often.
Categories and Tags URLs
Your permalink structure also affects how category and tag archive pages display.
With post name structure, they look like:
badassnetwork.com/yourblog/category/recipes/
badassnetwork.com/yourblog/tag/vegan/
WordPress adds /category/ and /tag/ prefixes automatically to avoid conflicts with post and page URLs. You can customize these prefixes in the Permalink Settings page under “Optional” if you want, but most people leave them as is.
Things That Might Trip You Up
Duplicate slugs get numbers added.
If you already have a post at /coffee-tips/ and you try to publish another post with the same slug, WordPress automatically adds a number: /coffee-tips-2/. Usually means you need to make your slug more specific.
Special characters disappear.
WordPress strips out most special characters when generating slugs. Apostrophes, quotes, commas, colons—they all vanish. So “What’s Next?” becomes whats-next. Usually fine, but worth knowing if you’re surprised by the results.
Slugs don’t update automatically if you change your title later.
Once you’ve saved a draft or published a post, editing the title doesn’t change the slug. You’d need to manually update the slug field separately. This is actually a good thing—prevents accidental URL changes.
Common Questions About Permalinks
Probably not if you’re already using post name. It’s the most widely recommended option for blogs. The only reason to change would be if you’ve got specific needs like including dates for news content or using a custom structure for organizational purposes.
You can select “Day and name” or “Month and name” structures, or build a custom structure using tags like %year% and %monthnum%. Just know that dated URLs can make evergreen content look outdated, which might hurt clicks and traffic over time.
Yeah, there’s a “Custom Structure” option at the bottom of the Permalink Settings page where you can build your own using tags. You’d need to know which tags WordPress supports—things like %postname%, %category%, %author%, etc. Honestly, unless you’ve got really specific requirements, post name structure handles most use cases.
Some people do this with custom structures like /%category%/%postname%/, which creates URLs like /recipes/chocolate-cake/. It can help with organization, but it also locks you in—if you recategorize a post later, the URL changes. Most people skip it.
WordPress adds a number to the second one’s slug automatically. If you’ve got “Coffee Tips” at /coffee-tips/ and you publish another post called “Coffee Tips,” it becomes /coffee-tips-2/. You should probably make your slug more specific instead.
WordPress handles UTF-8 characters, so you can technically use accented letters, Cyrillic, Chinese characters, etc. in slugs. Whether you should depends on your audience—some characters look weird in URLs or get encoded strangely. Emojis get stripped out. For maximum compatibility, stick with basic Latin characters and hyphens.
What You’ve Set Up
You’ve now got clean, SEO-friendly URLs that make sense to both humans and search engines. Your posts and pages display with descriptive permalinks that help people understand what they’re clicking on before they even visit.
From here, you’ll probably want to focus on actually creating content. Your URL structure’s sorted—now it’s about writing posts that make those URLs worth clicking.
Related Resources
- Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Titles — Optimize post titles that become your URLs
- Configuring Your Blog Settings — Adjust other important WordPress settings
- Categories and Tags Best Practices — Organize your content effectively
- Creating Your First Blog Post — Start publishing with your new URL structure
- Understanding WordPress Dashboard — Navigate your blog’s admin area
Need Help?
Having trouble with permalink settings or URLs not working as expected?
- Contact Badass Network Support with details about what’s not working
- Include your blog URL and the permalink structure you’re trying to use
- Let us know if you’re seeing any error messages
- Screenshots help if you’re getting unexpected results
We’ll get back to you within 24 hours and help you sort it out.